Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Fair-Trade Clothing

Hi it's Caroline!

A few days ago, while I was reserching for my next blog, I decided to look up fair trade clothing. In the aspect of fair trade, clothes are probably one of the worst offenders. See, people will go and buy fair-trade coffee, or chocolate, but clothes? Yeah... no thanks. I see their point, thant a lot people are super-picky about the clothes they wear, or have an allergy to materials used in some clothes. I think that the real difference is that most clothing brands don't offer fair- trade clothing, and people aren't going out and looking for fair-trade clothing. I know we've all seen "made in China" printed on the tag of our shirts at least once, but does it make you think? About those workers in China, making the clothes you're wearing now? It's probabaly not fair-trade made clothing, so the workers probably don't have safe working conditions or even minimum-wage pay. Just so you can wear that nice shirt to school one day. People ask, "Why don't they just stop working there?" Like Ginger mentioned in one of her blogs, they can't, because there is literally no other work where they live. So maybe, if we buy from fair-trade companies, say Ten Thousand Villages, over non fair-trade companies, like Gap, or Target, we can convince these non fair-trade companies to incorperate some fair-trade items. I'm not saying you all have to stop shopping at stores that aren't fair-trade, since, let's face it, fair-trade companies don't make every single thing that we use daily, but just switching over small things, like coffee, a fair-trade shirt, maybe some skin care products, is what really makes a difference :)

While I was reserching fair-trade clothing, I found the company Avatar Imports, an all fair-trade clothing company. This is probably one of my favorite things from there, thanks to the awesome owls on the front :)

All About Us: Ginger & Caroline, Jersey Shore Fair Trade

It has come to our attention that many of our classmates don't know the importance of fair trade, if they know what it is at all.
Fair trade is a social movement focused on worker rights, making sure workers have safe working conditions, fair wages, and avoids child labor.
For example, our classmates hear about people living off of 1 dollar a day, but still wear Nike shoes and Banana Republic attire. For us, this is disturbing in many ways. For they feel bad for these people, but their shopping decisions suggests the opposite.
We are creating this blog to teach people of all ages, including teenagers, about the importance of Fair Trade, and where to shop at places that provide goods that are Fair Trade items.
One of our goals is to try to get people to use their spending to provide social justice.
Not to say we've never shop at some of these non- fair trade stores (yes we both wear Holister and Nike) but if the consumers (aka the shoppers) consider alternatives and make small steps like eating fair trade foods and writing letters to the non- fair trade stores, a big impact could be made.